ed--
Rede of the Lord.]

The next poems no one denies to Jeremiah; they are among the finest we
have from him. And how natural that he should conceive and utter them in
those quiet days when he was at, or near, Ramah, the grave of the mother
of the people.(646) He hears her century-long travail of mourning for the
loss of the tribes that were sprung from her Joseph, aggravated now by the
banishment of her Benjamin; but hears too the promise that her travail
shall be rewarded by their return. The childless old man has the soul of
mother and father both--now weeping with the comfortless Rachel and now, in
human touches unmatched outside the Parable of the Prodigal, reading into
the heart of God the same instinctive affections, to which, in spite of
himself, every earthly father is stirred by the mere mention of the name
of a rebellious and wandered son. The most vivid details are these: _after
I had been brought to know_, which might also be translated _after I had
been made to know myself_ and so anticipate _when he came to himself_ of
our Lord's Parable; _I smote on my thigh_, the gesture of despair; and in
20_a_ the very human attribution to the Deity of surprise that the mere
name of Ephraim should move Him to affection, which recalls both in form
and substance the similar question attributed to the Lord in XII. 9.

There is no reason to try, as some do, to correct in the poems their
broken measures, for these both suit and add to the poignancy and
tenderness which throb through the whole.(647)

Hark, in Ramah is heard lamentation 15
And bitterest weeping,
Rachel beweeping her children,
And will not be comforted,(648)
For they are not.
Thus saith the Lord: 16
Refrain thy voice from weeping,
And from tears thine eyes,
For reward there is for thy travail--
They are back from the land of the foe!
[And hope there is for thy future, 17
Thy sons come back to their border.](649)

I have heard, I have heard 18
Ephraim bemoaning,
"Thou hast chastened me, chastened I am,
Like a calf untrained.
"Turn me Thyself, and return I will,
For Thou art my God.
"For after I had turned away (?)(650) 19
I repented ... (?)
"And after I was brought to know,(651)
I smote on my thigh.
"I am shamed, yea and confounded,
As I bear the reproach of my youth."(652)

Is Ephraim My dearest son,(653)